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Mind, Matter and Mathematics
(2008)
A reaction to the article „The Lost Archive“, The Wall Street Journal 12.1.2008, page 1 (US edition) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120008793352784631.html The belief in the myth that old manuscripts should be mysterious and powerful is part and parcel of the age of Modernity. That such expectations were operative in the discussion on the Qumran fragments is still remembered, and more recently the Da Vinci Code, in itself a quite shallow story, sold extremely well. The fact that the Wall Street Journal placed an article on the “lost Bergsträsser-film archive” of Qur’anic manuscripts on its front page on 12th of January seems to be due to the myth of “textual wars” taking place in the world.
Psychology's territories - historical and contemporary perspective from different disciplines
(2007)
What determines the territories of psychology? How have the boundaries of psychological research and practice been developed in history, and how might or should they be changed nowadays? This volume presents new approaches to these questions, resulting from a three-year collaboration among internationally known psychologists, neuroscientists, social scientists and historians and philosophers of science from Germany and the United States under the auspices of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The authors reflect critically on traditional and current views of psychology on the basis of focused historical and contemporary case studies of three broad topic areas: How have psychological concepts been used in disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, or neuroscience, as well as in daily life? Has the use of instruments in psychological research expanded or restricted the discipline’s reach? And how have applications of psychological thinking and research worked in practical contexts? The volume thus presents essays that investigate the separations as well as the interactions between psychology and its neighboring disciplines and, moreover, essays that try to overcome disciplinary distinctions in exemplary ways. The contributions aim to make historical and philosophical studies of psychology relevant to contemporary concerns, and to show how psychology can profit from better interdisciplinary cooperation, thus improving mutual understanding between different scientific cultures.
Full applicability of physics to human biology does not necessarily imply that one can uncover a comprehensive, algorithmic correlation between physical brain states and corresponding mental states. The argument takes into account that information processing is finite in principle in a finite world. Presumbly the brain-mind-relation cannot be resolved in all essential aspects, particularly when high degrees of abstraction or self-analytical processes are involved. Our conjecture plausibly unifies the universal validity of physics and a logical limitation of human thought, and it does not regard consciousness -the most basic human experience - as a marginal phenomenon. ++++ RATIO appeared up to 1987 in both a German and an English version. The German title of this article: Alfred Gierer, Der physikalische Grundlegungsversuch in der Biologie und das psychophysische Problem. RATIO XII, Heft 1, 1970, S. 40-54.
Understanding cooperative human behaviour depends on insights into the biological basis of human altruism, as well as into socio-cultural development. In terms of evolutionary theory, kinship and reciprocity are well established as underlying cooperativeness. Reasons will be given suggesting an additional source, the capability of a cognition-based empathy that may have evolved as a by-product of strategic thought. An assessment of the range, the intrinsic limitations, and the conditions for activation of human cooperativeness would profit from a systems approach combining biological and socio-cultural aspects. However, this is not yet the prevailing attitude among contemporary social and biological scientists who often hold prejudiced views of each other's notions. It is therefore worth noticing that the desirable integration of aspects has already been attempted, in remarkable and encouraging ways, in the history of thought on human nature. I will exemplify this with the ideas of the fourteenth century Arab-Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. He set out to explicate human cooperativeness - "asabiyah" - as having a biological basis in common descent, but being extendable far beyond within social systems, though in a relatively unstable and attenuated fashion. He combined psychological and material factors in a dynamical theory of the rise and decline of political rulership, and related general social phenomena to basic features of human behaviour influenced by kinship, expectation of reciprocity, and empathic emotions.
The study of structures is a common concern of all scientific disciplines. The motivation as well as the methods of analysis, however, differ considerably. In engineering, the generation of artifacts, of infrastructures or technological processes are of primary interest. Frequently, the analysis aims at an optimization of the structures and the structure generating processes. Quite different is the study and explanation of existing structures in biology and the social sciences. Here the question of optimality does not present itself in an unambiguous manner. Generally, it must be questioned whether biological and social structures, although developing in an evolutionary way, can be considered as leading towards an a-priori defineable goal of optimality. The complex scenario of qualitative and quantitative modeling, and the goal-oriented and statistical approaches to understanding the meliorisation efforts in the various fields of the sciences and humanities define the scope of this book. Its intention is to create trans-disciplinary insights into methods to fecundate the custom disciplinary approaches.
The concept of ecosystem services was developed capitalizing on ecological knowledge that ecosystems perform various functions like increasing or retarding water fluxes, cleansing or polluting water, modifying microclimatic conditions, sustaining or impoverishing biological diversity and so on. There is growing body of ecological knowledge that management of agricultural landscape for its structural diversity is becoming the important pillar of the sustainability of rural areas. Programmes of environmental protection in rural areas should aim not only at introduction environmental friendly technologies of cultivation within farm. They should also be concerned with challenge of how to increase the resistance or resilience of the whole landscape against threats. Recognition of non -commodity effects of diversified agricultural landscape formed by introduction into cultivated fields shelterbelts, stretches of meadows, small mid -field water reservoirs and other biogeochemical barriers provide new options to combine societal demands with environment production. Co -adaptation of human activities with landscape services relies on policy that economic processes should be conformed with ecological processes operating in the region which are enhancing landscape capacities for naturalization of pollution, regeneration of wastes, recycling of water recourses as well as increasing resistance or resilience of the whole system to stresses caused by production of goals required by society. Recognition of system multifunctionality helps to achieve that goal. The knowledge on processes underpinning ecosystem services opened new frontiers for management of landscapes' structures towards enhancing their capacities to deliver requested services. Forests and shelterbelts show similar functions in the landscape but network of shelterbelts perform many similar services like forests growing on smaller part of landscape area. According to studies carried out by Research Centre for Agricultural and Forest Environment in Poland the following functions of shelterbelts are similar to those shown by forests when 4 -5% of the landscape area is under the network of shelterbelts: - modify the microclimatic conditions and heat and water balances; - control the water chemistry composition (control of diffuse pollution); - limit water and wind erosion; - protect the biodiversity; - increase the survival of the game animals; - enhance recreational value of the region; - provide wood and other products; - promote aesthetic values of the countryside. In this review the first four functions of agricultural landscape within Turew neighborhood will be presented.
With the present report the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities wants to draw attention to the results of one of its interdisciplinary projects, which are published elsewhere in more detail. The authors believe that their particular approach to the subject of "waste energy recovery", in combination with an interdisciplinary perspective, suggests a new way of discussing energy problems that has the potential to lead to qualified statements...
This is the invited evening lecture of the biannual workshop on hydroid development of 1999. Its topic is the role of hydra as a rather puristic model for the de-novo generation of spatial patterns in development, and our work in this field. Emphasis is placed not only on experimental studies, but also on theoretical analysis, because the understanding of spatial order requires a systems approach involving the combination of knowledge on molecules, cells and tissues with mathematical analysis, laws and facts.
The birth of rules
(2001)